Sunrise
by MisatoKitty
Summary: Saturn, triumphant, destroys the world. Saturn, triumphant, destroys the world. Saturn, triumphant, ...


DISCLAIMER: Relatively standard stuff. Existing characters are properties of the people who made them up. The story's mine, hence ownership and copyright of it belongs to me. Contact me at misato_98@yahoo.com if you want permission to use anything I've written for whatnot purposes.  
  
  
SUNRISE  
=======  
  
By  
  
Raymond Cooper  
  
  
  
It was dark.  
  
The stars above still shone, even as the sky slowly faded from a satin black to  
a deep azure blue. Birds began morning calls, but quieter than usual, shaken. As if  
they knew something that the rest of the world didn't.  
  
And they'd have been right.  
  
Hotaru Tomoe sat on a hillside, overlooking a small village in the mountains of Japan.  
Her clothes were damp with dew, but that didn't matter to her anymore. It wasn't like  
she was going to catch death from a cold or anything. She had to chuckle at that,  
softly, so as not to disturb the daytime wildlife just beginning to stir from restless  
and frightened slumber.  
  
Below her, on the hillside, lay the Bishoujo Senshi. Pretty soldiers in sailor suits.  
The nine who had helped her, laid open, fried, blistered and charred, flattened,  
jellified.  
  
Sailor Moon. Sailor Chibi-Moon. Sailor Mercury. Sailor Venus. Sailor Mars. Sailor  
Jupiter. The Inner Senshi, those who defended those worlds close to the sun, warm with  
life and intelligence. The more important planets in the hierachy of the former Moon  
Kingdom, those who Queen Serenity had cared about. The more prosperous, populated worlds  
that had bourne the scholars, the artists, the healers, the leaders, the protectors.  
  
Sailor Uranus. Sailor Neptune. Sailor Pluto. The Outer Senshi, those who defended the  
worlds beyond the warmth and life of the sun. Those whose wont was to live in darkness  
and shadow, to drift in the distant reaches, far from everything of import. The lesser  
worlds in the Kingdom, a level of power brought about by the worlds mostly being the  
warriors of Serenity's sphere of influence, those who held the more mighty tasks of  
holding off the dark, protecting the Inner Sphere of warriors from those without, from   
the mighty dark reaches of the infinite.  
  
And home of Neptune and Uranus, Senshi holding Saturn in order, protecting themselves  
and the timeline Pluto, with the Gates of Time at her beck and call, had forseen and worked towards.  
  
Was it good? Bad? In between? Hotaru didn't know. She was just a schoolgirl, normal  
in most respects. Apart from the whole being able to heal people ability.  
  
And the fact she was also Sailor Saturn, one of the Bishoujo Senshi. A pretty soldier  
in a sailor suit. Although Hotaru didn't think of herself as a pretty soldier. She  
didn't rate that high in people's thoughts. She was a gun: a planetbuster. Point and  
pull her trigger. Saturn was the ultimate in weapons of mass destruction.  
  
And so it was that Neptune and Uranus had tried to kill her. Oh, not Hotaru Tomoe. They  
might have even liked the kid, but Hotaru didn't know. They'd tried instead to kill  
Saturn.  
  
The easiest way to do that was to kill Hotaru, the girl who became Sailor Saturn.  
  
Once upon a time, they'd been able to. They'd tracked Saturn's incarnate forms down,  
and executed them before the Saturn persona and strengths had been able to emerge. But  
they'd missed Hotaru's birth. She'd made it to teenagedom, at least, and by all  
accounts (Hotaru wasn't quite sure) Uranus had decided it had to be now or never.  
  
They knew they'd never have been able to take down an adult Saturn. So, they struck.  
  
Without warning. Without compassion. That they'd been partners, companions, friends  
even, had relationships closer than family... hadn't mattered to the two Outers.  
  
And when Saturn had emerged, wounded, angry, they'd not stood a chance.  
  
But in striking back, the Inners had noticed. Had struck at her. Saturn had been  
enraged. She'd originally thought they could see reason, that Uranus and Neptune had  
tried to kill her, that she'd been acting in defence. But they didn't listen. And they,  
too, had fallen.  
  
Pluto was the last to fall, strangely enough. Saturn had assumed it would be Sailor  
Moon, but that was not to be. In fact, the Moon Princess had been the first to make a  
fatal error. Her daughter had fallen soon afterwards.  
  
Not far from where Hotaru sat, depowered, untransformed, arms wrapped around her knees,  
lay Pluto. Hotaru could see the chest of the older woman lifting and dropping shallowly.  
Pluto was still alive, hands wrapped around her staff. With the blisters across her  
exposed skin, Hotaru guessed that was very painful. She'd have helped, healed the  
older senshi, but she had also tried to kill her. Even Hotaru couldn't forgive that.  
  
Besides, that part of her which was forever Saturn wouldn't allow her.  
  
On the horizon, the sun peeked through the clouds. Hotaru smiled, raised her head. Felt  
the warmth of light on her alabaster skin. She watched it rise, wondered if anyone else  
was also watching this. Wondered if others thought it as beautiful as she did. It rose,  
climbing, climbing. And when it was a full diameter above the horizon, she stood.  
  
She held up her henshin wand, wrapped her fingers around it. Pluto's eyes moved.  
  
"Do you know... what you are doing?" she asked, hoarsely.  
  
"Yes," said Hotaru, but not in her usual voice. A little louder, more controlled. More  
powerful. "I'm making sure that this can't happen again. I've been killed by my  
compatriots too many times. I won't let it happen again."  
  
"But... you are bringing about... the ends of billions of lives!"  
  
"I'm as cold as you, Mistress Pluto."  
  
"I can't..."  
  
"SATURN PLANET POWER... MAKE-UP!" A flash, reformation of clothing into new forms,  
muscles given access to vast amounts of power, new knowledge brought forth.  
  
"... let you..."  
  
Saturn raised the Silence Glaive, and whipped it around her waist. Balls of energy  
crackled at the tips, weaving paths with small tendrils. Air crackled and popped as  
the local atmosphere churned around them.  
  
"Death Reborn Revolution!"  
  
"... do this." Pluto pushed herself into a sitting position, as energies crackled down  
from the glaive into the ground. Lines of force erupted globally, tearing apart local  
gravitics, ripping the atmosphere into smaller and smaller particles, the reaction  
creating its own energy to continue and expand the reaction across the globe.  
  
But Pluto saw none of this. Painfully, she waved her staff, felt her access to the Time  
Gate on Pluto open with the slightest caress of her will. "Time... loop!" she gasped, a  
scant moment before the local atmosphere tore oxygen and hydrogen molecules apart, then  
mashed them back together in an explosive conflagration.  
  
Caught in the massive energies, both surviving Senshi expired, their strengthened bodies  
holding onto life and coherency just that moment longer, long enough for both to feel  
unyielding pain and agonies.  
  
From space, the life of the planet Earth ended, just a few moments after dawn in Japan.  
  
Chunks of rock would impact on the moon, causing new craters. The loss of a large  
local source of gravity would then cause the moon's orbit to destabilise, bringing  
damage to the other inner planets of the system, and even to the outermost worlds.  
  
Or they would, if there wasn't a brief jump in the positions of the stars, the light from  
the sun... and the blue glow from the planet Earth.  
  
Down on the planet below, in Japan, it was dark.  
  
The stars above still shone, even as the sky slowly faded from a satin black to  
a deep azure blue. Birds began morning calls, but quieter than usual, shaken. As if  
they knew something that the rest of the world didn't.  
  
And they'd have been right.  
  
Hotaru Tomoe sat on a hillside, overlooking a small village in the mountains of Japan.  
Her clothes were damp with dew, but that didn't matter to her anymore. It wasn't like  
she was going to catch death from a cold or anything. She had to chuckle at that,  
softly, so as not to disturb the daytime wildlife just beginning to stir from restless  
and frightened slumber.  
  
Below her, on the hillside, lay the Bishoujo Senshi. Pretty soldiers in sailor suits.  
The nine who had helped her, laid open, fried, blistered and charred, flattened,  
jellified.  
  
She frowned as she looked down at them, cocked her head to one side. She knew this.  
She had lived this already. Which didn't make sense, knowing what she was going to do  
after giving the Land of the Rising Sun one last sunrise... it couldn't make sense.  
  
And it was then... then, and only then... that she realised Pluto was dead.  
  
And Pluto had a smile on her face.  
  
It couldn't exactly be described as a nice smile, either. Hotaru stared.  
  
And then, quietly, began to cry as she realised what she'd just done. And would do  
again.  
  
And again. And again... 


End file.
